Il-Ħarba by Alfred Massa, published by Horizons, 2022

Since time immemorial, mankind has been plagued by wars and conflicts of all sorts, and all the horrors they invariably bring about.

Alfred Massa has, ironically, published this his latest novel Il-Ħarba, when the much real Russian/Ukrainian conflict is demoralising the whole world.

In this novel, Massa, surpassing himself in his narrative and captive realistic style, takes us back to another horrible episode in the history of humanity: World War II (1939-1945).

The catalyst behind this massive tragedy was, of course, Adolf Hitler, whose quest for power and his hatred of the Jewish race eventually drew the whole world into one of the most terrible wars that mankind had ever waged against itself.

In his Il-Ħarba, Massa takes us back to that fatal and eventful September of 1939 and, with an outstanding mix of both history and the story he had in mind, he brings on stage five Jewish families, under the guidance of Rabbi Jacob who, wisely and fully conscious of what was in store for Poland, where the families lived, and what was in store for the Jewish population, seriously advised all to escape to the dense Polish forests to avoid further oppressive and inhuman cruelties which the Nazis were relentlessly inflicting on Polish Jews.

All the families agree with Rabbi Jacob’s wise advice, and the novel proceeds with a thrilling step by step trip into reality, between the fears and the hopes of all these families in an ultimate redemption for all their sufferings as victims of hatred and prejudice; and the climax of the novel is not only enthralling and surprisingly brilliant, but also a symbolical crie de coeur of all humanity to all those would-be tyrants who insensitively choose to do without peace and demoniacally relish the insane joy of utter devastation.

I’m cynically afraid that this crie de oeur will be heard only until the next tyrant will take over, and back to another war and more devastation we go.

A very neat and beautiful publication printed by Horizons, Il-Ħarba is a unique novel of its kind, replete not only with just and imagined story, but also with a lot of salient and historical information, calling for serious soul-searching and reflection, enhanced by a particularly vivid narrative line that will make the reader ever more conscious of what mankind is all about.